


stone in my heart

by llien



Series: Though I did what I thought I had to do, I still lost you [4]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Communication, Developing Friendships, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 12:57:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20340484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llien/pseuds/llien
Summary: “What’re you doing up here?” Aqua demanded instead. Her hands rested perfunctorily on her lap, one over the other, as was right and proper.“Same as you,” Axel said, his hand on his knee rising to point at her languidly.Sleeplessness, self-hate, anxiety too persistent to outrun, nightmares?“To escape it all!” He finished, throwing that hand out wide and gesturing to the sky so close, it was almost as if she could fall forward into it.





	stone in my heart

**Author's Note:**

> _She cries to the heaven above_   
_There is a stone in my heart_
> 
> (holds up Aqua & Axel) I just think they're neat.

It was an unlikely friendship, to be sure.

“Now, what have we here?”

Aqua glanced up, hating already that she’d been found,  _ hating  _ who had found her,  _ hating  _ her hate. Axel still had an arm along the door jamb, the angle of his body through the doorway suggested he’d swung himself around it. His lanky limbs were held akimbo, like he had never figured out what to do with his height, and in the night his green eyes glittered with greed.

She immediately unfurled, letting her legs dangle over the edge, straightening the curl of her back as she dropped her hands.

“Oh,” Axel said next.

Aqua cleared her throat and cast her gaze out onto the eternal nothing. There were so many stars she couldn’t even begin to count them. Couldn’t even section an imaginary square to count those, lights winking in and out and cosmos drifting like the river they always compared it too. Sora once told her, sitting at her feet with his chin on her knees as she worked metal, how they’d made a constellation of him, Donald, and Goofy. He’d rested his cheek, boyish mumbles as he kept himself from sleep, and said that he’d like to show her one day.

How could she be open and honest, tell this bright-eyed sweet hero of the worlds that she couldn’t bear to step foot in that world again? That Zack was surely older than her, now? That it wasn’t that she wished her appearance had changed but that she’d never experienced the past decade at all? That she didn’t want to rehash the entirety of her nightmares for an acquaintance, even if she missed him, because it’d been so long that ‘friend’ felt pitiful?

She couldn’t tell him. He was still far younger than her, already burdened with the weight of their expectations, the mantle he bore because Riku had failed.

_ (You’re hideous,  _ she heard,  _ blaming Riku for the same sins you forgave Terra for. Can you imagine the look on his face if he heard that? Some guardian of light you are.) _

They were visiting Hercules in a week.

“Well,  _ this  _ seems like a lot more than I bargained for,” Axel said in that round-the-loop way of his, and she didn’t look when he sat himself beside her, and despite the awkward way he held himself he was all grace when he settled, not unlike a cat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aqua said, a burn settling in the small of her back as she forced it straight.

“If I hadn’t seen you a second ago, you’d’ve had me fooled,” Axel admitted, and Aqua bit back her scowl.

“What’re you doing up here?” Aqua demanded instead. Her hands rested perfunctorily on her lap, one over the other, as was right and  _ proper.  _

Axel was leaning back on an arm, the other resting on his bent knee as he stared at the stars beyond their isolated tower. Aqua loved this tower, and she hated it. It was all at once a place her past-self didn’t belong in, a relief, and a place her present-self couldn’t stand, a burden. All those bright blue eyes looking up at her. She couldn’t fail them.

“Same as you,” Axel said, his hand on his knee rising to point at her languidly.

Sleeplessness, self-hate, anxiety too persistent to outrun, nightmares?

“To escape it all!” He finished, throwing that hand out wide and gesturing to the sky so close, it was almost as if she could fall forward into it.

“I don’t run from my problems,” she said stiffly, and realized with a bitten curse that she’d slouched again. She forced her back straight.

She hated Axel’s eyes. They were too bright, lit from within with an uncanny knowledge. He always pretended to be lazier, or less intuitive than he was, and Aqua hated how it made her feel sliced down the middle, like an experiment to investigate.

“Of course,” Axel acquiesced. “Wonderful guardian of light never abandons her duties — no one would believe me anyways.”

“You act like you’re  _ right,”  _ Aqua hissed.  _ Careful now, showing your true colors,  _ a mocking voice laughed.

He lifted his hands, shrugging. “I’m agreeing with you, isn’t that what you like?”

“What?” She said in disbelief.  _ “Like?” _

“Yeah,” he nodded, leaning back on both hands, but inevitably one came back up because he could never stop talking with them. “All the little kids, eager to please, have mommy praise them with gold stars and pats on the head—”

_ “I’m not their mother!”  _

Axel’s wide-eyes snapped her from her outburst, and she lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. Shame came like a hot deluge, and bitterly she found herself exhausted. She looked down at her lap, and realized her wayfinder wasn’t there. 

“...I’m sorry,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as they burned. “Y-you didn’t do anything wrong for me to snap like that.”

_ Temperamental, not at all what Master Eraqus would approve of.  _

I know, she thought, I know,  _ I know, I know, please stop— _

“Yes I did.”

Aqua blinked, ignoring the tears making her lashes wet and she looked up, staring at Axel’s unrepentant face. He wasn’t grinning anymore, glittering green eyes calmed to something more human, forgiving. He raked his hand through his fiery hair, and gave her a wry smile. “You’re too quick to blame yourself. I pushed all your buttons knowing exactly what I was doing. See, me? I’m not so good.” He wiggled his fingers. “Too curious for my own good, I’d say.”

“What?” She asked, confused. She felt like she had whiplash, violently jerked from her self-loathing into his almost-compliment. 

“If I hadn’t see you trying to wish yourself away,” Axel said, bringing his legs up to cross like awkward straws, scooting to face her, “I would’ve been fooled, you know? You act like you’re so in-control, like nothing could ruffle a single blue hair on your head. Outright pisses a guy in a mid-life crisis off,” Axel admitted.

She had no idea what to say that. Axel being personally offended by her ability to pretend she was perfectly in charge was beyond her scope of expectation. The most she’d suspected was mild ire because he was  _ lazy,  _ not because he felt equally lost and resented her for somehow being put-together. 

One thing nagged at her though.

“...quarter-life crisis,” Aqua said.

“What?” Axel couldn’t sound more baffled if he tried.

“You’re, what, 25?” Aqua said, blinking and doing what she did best — focus on everything but herself. “Unless you plan on dying by 50, you’re in a quarter-life crisis.”

Axel stared at her.

Then, he burst into laughter too loud for this hour of the night.

Aqua winced, grabbing his arm to dig her nails in. “You’re too loud!” She hissed.

He tamed his cackle-chuckle into something more reasonable, bringing his free hand up to wipe under his eyes. “50! I don’t plan on  _ anything  _ but when I can sleep next.” He laughed more, hysterical sounding, and Aqua wondered distantly what on earth she was doing on the highest balcony in the tower with her complete opposite.

Then with a sigh, he laid out on the floor, arms flopping out on other side of him. Aqua stared, almost aghast.

“That wasn’t the point,” he said, waving his hand as if to dismiss what he’d derailed by his amusement, “not that the point was even personal. It’s all point _ less _ now, since you’re just as lost as me.”

“No I’m not,” Aqua said, though even she didn’t know if she was trying to fool herself or him.  _ Yes, you are. Still lost, waiting for someone to save you. _

He peeked at her. “Well, you’re not as put-together as you try to pretend you are. Guess it’s a little of a relief. Here I was, thinking ‘damn, you’re not really hot shit anymore when some 18-year-old is doing better than you,’ but we both have new paths we’re hesitant to explore, huh?”

Lea wasn’t Axel wasn’t Lea — he’d paid a similar penance, 10 years wallowing in apathy. The ‘Lea’ Ven had known wasn’t the same Lea before her now.

Her back was  _ aching  _ now. She kept her facade up, face neutral in the way she’d practiced. Still, her hands curled into fists in her skirt. Would it be so horrible for one person to see? 

Terra knew, in an abstract sort of way. He’d known her  _ before,  _ so he knew now how full of it she was, but they both had too many of their own problems to bear the others’. Nevermind that Aqua would never begrudge helping Terra. That didn’t matter when she couldn’t bring herself to tug on his sleeve and admit she was falling apart. She definitely couldn’t tell  _ Ven.  _ Axel wasn’t wrong in calling her their mother. Ven had always been attached to her, even more so now without Eraqus to be a true paternal figure. And, she suspected, Ven wouldn’t be looking for any more of them. 

Still, Axel was looking at her with his cat-eyes, a gaze that said he  _ knew  _ she was lying, knew it as well a liar could recognize their own. What was the point in keeping it up when no matter what she said, Axel wouldn’t believe her?

Besides, she wasn’t letting  _ him  _ down. He’d said it himself that he’d even resented her before, no matter how impersonal it was. Axel didn’t come looking for her for tips on magic, or to make him a meal, or when he had nightmares. He only ever looked to her on missions, the way one does to a commander. And Aqua knew for a fact she could still hand him his ass on a silver platter if she wished.

She hesitated, and shook her head. 

_ You think any of your ‘friends’ even care? _

“Tell you what,” Axel said, breaking her from her thoughts again, “lay down here and just look up. You don’t gotta confide in  _ me,  _ but well. I’m not gonna chase you from your spot, either.”

She looked down at him, the way he stretched out like a cat in the sun. Her back  _ was  _ beginning to hurt something fierce, now. Letting go of the stranglehold she had on her skirt, she slowly laid down, careful not to touch him. 

Immediately relief poured across her back, leaving her in a sigh. The stars felt so much closer, like she could reach up and touch them, even though she knew they were lightyears away. With her palms flat on cool stone, Aqua closed her eyes. 

Comfortable silence fell between them, surprising her. She’d never thought she’d get along so well with him of all people. Lazy, lethargic, sarcastic, always leading Ven and Roxas and Xion on foolish ill-thought adventures that ended with a lecture from her or Riku. She turned his words over in her mind, wondering if they were true or false, something to comfort her in a shallow awkward attempt or genuine in their abrasiveness. 

“Did you really think that?” 

“Think what?” Axel hummed, sounding half asleep.

“That I’m… so put-together,” Aqua said.

He hummed louder. “Well, you act like a know-it-all. Always in control. Like I said, it wasn’t personal.”

She didn’t know how she felt, being disliked for something that was barely true. Did she  _ want  _ Axel to like her? In a vague sort of way, she thought she did. They were fellow guardians, and Ven was their mutual friend. She didn’t think poorly of him really, she just wished he’d shape up. Maybe be less of a bad influence on the others.

“I don’t think I know it all,” Aqua whispered.

_ Did you ever? They never did come for you, and you believed so sincerely that they would. _

“I’ve been wrong plenty of times,” she continued, a vulnerability so fragile it scared her to say it.

She felt weak, then. Weak, and young.

“So’ve I,” Axel confessed, “thought I knew  _ one  _ thing for sure, but poof!” His hands mimicked smoked. “Gone.”

Somehow, that made her laugh, a tiny giggle of sound. The things she had believed in hadn’t failed her like smoke. It’d been more like she’d walked a path so certain she hadn’t even needed to look down, but the road had ended with no warning and she’d plummeted, down, down, down into disappointment and resentment and embittered loneliness.

Axel’s arms moved in her periphery, and she glanced to find him folding them under his head. It gave her a little more room to spread her own arms out, not quite into a starfish, but less constrained.

There was more to him than she’d assumed.

_ Never learn your lessons, do you? _

“What’ve you been wrong about?” She asked, then hurriedly backtracked. “Uh— not that you have to tell me! That’s pretty private, I’m sorry I asked.”

_ “Uh!”  _ He snorted. “First I ever hear  _ you  _ stammer.” His easy demeanor calmed her, and she laid back down, feeling foolish for panicking in the first place. “I’ve been wrong about tons of things. People, places, even this whole stupid keyblade business.” His flashed into existence, blinding her.

Aqua leapt up to her knees, skittering backwards and hands half raised to her chest, eyes zeroing in on that blade of fire.

It disappeared just as quickly, and she let go of her breath.

“Oh,” Axel said eloquently as he sat up, and Aqua braced herself on the stone floor, laughter bubbling up and spilling over. She hadn’t been expecting it, she’d let down her guard. One of many things she’d been hiding from others, when before she could tame it down to a twitch of her hands, or a frown. She’d grown used to constant attacks.

She couldn’t look him in the face, hanging her head between her shoulders as her laughter died down to unamused giggles.

“Ah,” she sighed, sitting back on her heels. What did you even say following something like that? Slowly, she calmed down, looking back up at the sky. This evening was turning out to be more than she’d bargained for when she ran up here to escape the confines of her room.

“Well,” Axel began, then scratched his head, “you talk to anyone about that?”

“No,” she nearly wanted to snort, but she only ever let herself go like that with Terra and Ven. “It’s not that important.”

“Well I already say you don’t  _ gotta  _ confide in me,” Axel began awkwardly, and Aqua’s gaze slowly tracked down from the heavens to his too-green eyes stubbornly looking away from her, “but that doesn’t mean you  _ can’t,  _ you know? ‘Sides, I already know, so less effort.”

She thought it over, taking apart his words and actions and wondering again when she’d grown so wary of people. Her trust in others had been broken, but Axel didn’t need to know that. She gave him a smile.

“That’s kind of you to offer—”

“—but no dice, huh?” Axel finished, meeting her gaze. He huffed, then laid down again slowly, tapping the spot next to him with an index finger. He wasn’t easy to fool now, Aqua realized.

He’d broken the walls with a bludgeon and no matter how quickly she’d redirected him and rebuilt them, he’d already  _ seen.  _

But, laying down and stargazing as her heart rate crept back to normal wasn’t so bad. Once upon a time, she’d done this with Terra and Ven, too.

Axel didn’t say anything when her hands fisted in the hem of his jacket, and for that she was grateful.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter | _oathbreaker
> 
> Aqua's still? mentally 18? That's pretty young, to be burdened with so many responsibilities. She may be a mother figure, but she can't be it all the time. Nothing's quite resolved here, but I like to think that with time, Aqua could come to trust Axel as someone she doesn't need to perform Perfect for.
> 
> Also I can never choose between Axel or Lea but like, the name choice doesn't have a reason lol.


End file.
